A TRIBUTE 
JOHN WESLEY 


GEN. JAMES F. RUSLING — 


June 28th, 1903 


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John Wesley and Methodism 


BY 


GEN. JAMES F. RUSLING, A.M., LL.D. 


AN ADDRESS AT 


STATE STREET M. E. CHURCH 


TRENTON, N, J. 
JUNE 28, 1903 


TRENTON, N. J.: 
MacCretiisH & QuicitEy, Book anp Jos PRINTERS 
1903. 


(This was a Laymen’s Meeting, presided over by Rev. Dr. Fox, pastor 
of State Street M. E. Church, with addresses by Dr. Levi Seeley, of the 
State Normal School, and Gen. Rusling.) 


We have had a good deal of John Wesley here the last 
three Sundays (three Wesley sermons by our pastor Rev. 
John D. Fox, D.D.), and yet is there not room for some- 
thing more? John Wesley is a big subject, and he grows 
and broadens upon you the more you gaze upon him, 
like some old castle or ancient cathedral, until ablaze 
with grandeur and beauty. He is not a little babbling 
brook, that a child may dam with a shingle; but seems 
like a great and majestic river, that broadens and deep- 
ens as it flows, until at last it merges into the ocean, 
so imperceptibly you can hardly tell where river ends 
or ocean begins. Let me begin by telling you about 
a “Pilgrimage to Epworth,” his honored birthplace, 
that I made four years ago when in England. Ep- 
worth is only a little town of 2,000 people, four or five 
miles from everywhere. So obscure it is you can scarcely 
find it on an ordinary map of England. But John Wes- 
ley has made it a great place. I think it was Themistocles 
who said, “It is true, I can not play a fiddle, but I know 
how to make a great town out of a small city.” We went 
through the old Epworth rectory, a typical English country 
rectory, but found no “ ghost” there, though John Wesley 
records there was one there once; and then through its 
old English garden, full of roses, dahlias, geraniums, 
chrysanthemums and cabbages; and then through the 
old Epworth Church, a typical old English Church, with 
its flagged walks and stately trees and crowded grave- 
yard; and then to the gravestone of his father Samuel 


4 


Wesley, upon which John stood and preached, as man 
seldom preached before, when his fellow-churchmen locked 
the doors of his father’s old church against him. 

The next week, I went down to Oxford, and saw Christ 
Church College, where he matriculated, and then Lincoln 
College, of which he was elected a Fellow, because of his 
character and brains, and where the Holy Club was or- 
ganized—the very beginning of Methodism. I stood in 
his pulpit, where he preached for six years, as Chaplain 
of Lincoln, and entered his dormitory, and sat down in his 
study, where the ‘“‘ Holy Club” met statedly, for prayer, for 
religious conversation, and study of the Greek Testament, 
and lived according to method, and hence they were called 
“ Methodists”? in derision by their College friends of the 
baser sort. So, four hundred years ago, the Spaniards 
called the Dutch “ Beggars of the Sea” in derision; but 
in due time the Dutch swept the Spanish Dons from the 
Sea, and from the Netherlands, and made the name of 
“Sea Beggars”? memorable forever. So, a century ago, 
the British called George Washington and his ragged 
Continentals “‘ Yankees” in derision ; but in due time we 
ended Cornwallis, and already dominate this continent, 
and in due time as the great chief and leader of the Anglo 
Saxon nations will yet dominate the world. So we ac- 
cepted the name of “ Methodists,” and have made it 
honored and respected, and, please God, will yet make it 
memorable in the world’s history forever. 

Next I went up to London, with its teeming millions— 
the greatest city on the globe, or that ever was on the 
globe—and hunted up old City Road Chapel, the mother 
Church now of English Methodism, where John Wesley 
often preached, and behind which he now lies buried. I 
went into his old pulpit there, and sat down and pondered 
upon all before and around me, and then went out and 


5 


stood by his honored grave, and with uplifted hat and 
bowed head worshiped at his shrine. Said Dean Stanley, 
when he visited there: ‘‘I asked an old man, who showed 
me the Cemetery at City Road Chapel, ‘By whom was 
this Cemetery consecrated?’ and he answered, ‘It was 
consecrated by the bones of that holy man, that holy 
servant of God, John Wesley!’” And so I did well to 
worship there. 

Next I went to Westminster Abbey, old England’s Hall 
of Fame, the home of her great and illustrious dead, and 
there amidst monuments to kings and queens—to soldiers 
and statesmen, to scholars and poets—to her Henrys, her 
Edwards, her Elizabeth, to Mary Queen of Scots, etc., to 
Chatham, to Peel, to Palmerston, to Wilberforce, to Beacon- 
field, to Wolfe, to Outram, to Havelock, to Shakespeare, 
to Milton, to Chaucer, to Spenser, to Ben Jonson, and 
our own Longfellow and others of England’s greatest 
dead, I rejoiced to see a monument to John and Charles 
Wesley also, with John’s three great sayings inscribed 
thereon, that seem immortal. ist. His dying words, “The 
best of all is God is with us;” 2d. His great declaration, 
‘“The world is my parish ;” and 3d. His memorable words, 
“God buries his workmen, but carrieson His work.” And 
then and there, as [ thought of all these things, and of what 
great things this poor Epworth boy had achieved for God and 
Humanity, I more than ever thanked God for John Wesley 
and for his great mission and message to me and to man- 
kind. For he came to me through pious English ancest- 
ors, who were among his earliest disciples over a century 
ago, and the same week I went to Epworth I stood on the 
doorstep of their old mansion in Winterton, (still belonging 
to a kinsman of mine), from which he preached to the multi- 
tude in the street, and afterwards recorded in his remark- 
able Journal, “I preached to-day in Winterton to such a 


6 


congregation as Winterton never saw before; from thence 
we rode on to Barrow, where the mob was ready to receive 
us, but their hearts failed; so they gave us two or three 
huzzas, and let us pass unmolested.” ‘This was Saturday, 
August 8, 1761, anda slab on the wall of the old house, 
facing the street, (erected by my said kinsman, now a canon 
of the catherdal at Durham) bears this modest inscription, 
“Here Mr. Wesley first preached in Winterton August 8th, 
¥7O1 

But he did not always thus escape “the mob” of his 
times. Sometimes they broke up his meetings, and insult- 
ed and outraged him. Anda little band of “Freethinkers”’ 
over there in Lincolnshire, of whom my ancestor was one, 
organized themselves into his body-guard, because they be- 
lieved in fair-play and free speech, and defended his per- 
son and protected his meetings with “hedgestakes” be- 
cause not allowed to bear arms, and in due time they 
every one became converted, and grew into good and use- 
ful Christians, and from that converted ancestor of mine 
in due time came two Methodist ministers, two local 
preachers, and one exhorter; and all there is of piety and 
genuine religion in people of my name in America to-day 
has come down to us from that early disciple of John 
Wesley in England. And so I am glad and proud to 
stand here to-night, and speak a word or two in honor of 
John Wesley and Methodism. 

Next, speaking generally, I would say John Wesley 
was a man of a unique and striking personality. He was 
not a typical John Bull, big and brawny as we ordinarily 
see him caricatured, but was more of the type of Joseph 
Chamberlain, a little Englishman, of moderate stature, but 
alert and active. He came of a long line of English clergy- 
men; his father, his grandfather, his great-grandfather, 
and other ancestors back to Cromwell’s time (if not before) 


7 


were all ministers of the Church of England. Hehad an 
air of intelligence and distinction about him, that would 
have made him a marked man at any time and anywhere. 

As De Quincey said of Coleridge, ‘‘ If you met him at 
night, under a church porch, in the midst of a dripping 
rain, with an umbrella over him, you would still know him 
to bea great man.” He wore his hair parted in the middle, 
and flowing to his shoulders after the fashion of his times. 
His forehead was clear and smooth; his eye piercing and 
keen but kindly; his nose long and penetrating; his cheek 
bones high and commanding; his chin sharp and pointed; 
and his face generally like that of his kinsman, the great 
Duke of Wellington, once only Arthur Wellesley—both de- 
scended from the same ancestor, though one was an English- 
man and the other an Irishman. His dress was plain, but 
neat—never foppish nor slovenly—believing with Shakes- 
peare that “the apparel oft proclaims the man.” No 
buckles at his knees, no silk or velvet anywhere visible, 
and his head in his old age as white as snow. His 
mouth was large and flexible, and his voice clear and pene- 
trating, though never strong. But with it he preached inces- 
santly for fifty years and never wearied. He preached two 
and three times a day every day in the week, (Sundays in- 
cluded) often averaging 800 sermons a year, and never had 
“Clergyman’s sore throat” either! Never had to take “a 
vacation,” nor an “outing!” He used to say, preaching was 
only good bodily exertion, and recommended it as a “‘health- 
exercise” to all persons of weak lungs. 

Let me briefly sketch his wonderful life. Born June 
28, 1703, he left Epworth at 11 years of age, and 
entered Charterhouse School, London, to prepare for 
college—a school for poor but worthy boys, founded by 
a rich merchant of London and still in existence. At 
16 he entered Christ Church College, Oxford. At 20 he 


8 


graduated with high honors, and at 23 was elected fellow 
of Lincoln College and Chaplain there. At 30 he became 
an elder of the Church of England, and with his fellowship 
and chaplaincy at Lincoln seemed provided for, for life, 
had he chosen to take his ease at Oxford—the most charm- 
ing spot in all England, with its 23 colleges, and magnifi- 
cent libraries and glorious old buildings—an ideal home 
for “a scholar and a gentleman,’ as John Wesley then 
was. But no! God had touched his heart, and he must 
needs go forth first as a missionary to America, to convert 
the Indians, and then to preach the gospel to men and wo- 
men everywhere, in all the highways and byways of Great 
Britian, until he built up a great Society there, and a still 
larger one here in America, and the whole world came to 
recognize him as a great ecclesiastical statesman, as well 
as great preacher. He lived to be 88 years of age, and 
then passed sweetly away—the most lamented man of 
his century. He was a man of sound sense and sane 
judgment. He knew his England and his England came 
to know him. He said he did not believe in “giving all the 
best music to the Devil,” and so he married the best tunes 
he could find to the matchless hymns of Isaac Watts and 
Charles Wesley, and taught his people everywhere to sing 
them ‘‘with the spirit and with the understanding also,” and 
we have been a singing church ever since, and always will 
be. When in America, down yonder at Savannah, he organ- 
ized the first Sunday School ever in existence—fifty years 
before Robert Raikes established his first one in England 
—and because his boys and girls were only barefoot child- 
ren, too poor to buy shoes and stockings, he took off his 
own shoes and stockings and went barefoot also—being 
‘(all things to all men, that he might save some.”’ Of course 
he took no stock in mere ecclesiastical millinery, and pop- 
ish processions and pretensions, nor in the singular doc- 


9 


rines of election, reprobation, and infant'damnation. But he 
believed in the gracious gospel of a free and full salvation 
for each and for all men,-and that every man may know 
for himself (by the witness of the spirit) whether he is a 
child of God or a child of Satan. And his favorite hymn 
was that of Charles Wesley’s (who wrote 6000 hymns, of 
which nearly 500 are in our present Methodist hymnal): 


“Come sinners to the gospel feast, 
Let every soul be Jesus’ guest, 
Ye need not one be left behind, 
For God has bidden all mankind. 


Sent by my Lord, on you I call; 

The invitation is to all ; 

Come all the world ; come, sinner thou ; 
All things in Christ are ready now. 


“Come, all ye souls, by sin oppressed, 
Ye restless wanderers after rest ; 
Ye poor, and maimed, and halt, and blind, 
In Christ a hearty welcome find !”’ 


What a gracious message that was to the England of his 
day—largely “dead in trespasses and sins,” and mostly 
given over to ignorance, superstition, and bigotry! Why 
like our Divine Master of old, he “went about doing good.” 
And ‘‘the poor had the gospel preached unto them.” 
“And the common people heard him gladly.” And be- 
cause they did, they soon ceased to be “‘ common people,” 
and everywhere became uncommon people, because of 
the industry, the intelligence, the integrity, and thrift, 
which he and his preachers everywhere inculcated as card- 
inal virtues and saving graces of mankind. On every 
great moral question he was a century ahead of his times. 
He was against Sabbath-breaking, and horse-racing, and 
gambling, and intemperance (the popular vices of the 
England of his day) and Slavery, and every form of human 
wickedness. He established free schools for poor children, 


Io 


and free dispensaries and savings banks for poor folks. 
He was the friend of the toiling masses, and sympathized 
with the poor and suffering of every class. In the midst 
of a busy life, he found time to visit the sick and the pris- 
oner, and even to accompany the condemned to the gallows 
—to extend to them the last consolations of the gospel. 
He lived on $150 a year, for many years, giving the bulk of 
his income away to the poor and deserving ; and though the 
profits on his books were $150,000 or more, at his death 
his only possessions were his library and his own pub- 
lications, and these he bequeated to the Kingwood School 
and Methodist Conference, in aid of poor but worthy stu- 
dents and worn-out ministers of the gospel. 

Next, I would say, if true greatness consists in “the 
arduous greatness of great deeds done,” as Roscoe Conk- 
ling once said of General Grant, then surely John Wesley 
was a great and wonderful man. Indeed, he would have 
been a great and wonderful man in any age or anywhere. 
He believed in the genius of hard work, and had “an 
infinite capacity for taking pains.” He would have beena 
great soldier, ora great statesman, or a great philosopher, 
had he not chosen rather to be a great Methodist preacher. 
Why he was one of 1g children, born there at Epworth, 
and his mother one of 25. No “race suicide” over there! 
How President Roosevelt would have rejoiced in that 
Epworth household—both in its quality and quantity! 
First and last he preached over 40,000 sermons, and 
often traveled 8,000 miles a year, and rode more miles on 
horseback and paid more turnpike tolls than any other 
man in England. He was not only a great preacher, but a 
great theologian and scholar as well, and as the mere by- 
product of his life (so to speak) he wrote a great commen- 
tary on both the old and new Testaments, and cheap books 
and pamphlets for his people almost innumerable—the pub- 


LE 


lished list of his works alonenumbering 283. He believed in 
the laity, as weilas the clergy, and for the first time in the 
history of the Christian Church he gave our laymen a 
chance—both male and female—and right nobly have they 
vindicated his wisdom and sagacity in doing so. And to- 
night, on this the 2ooth anniversary of his birthday, in 
behalf of our laymen here and everywhere, I beg to lay this 
tribute at his feet. Why he was as chivalrous and evangel- 
istic and broad-minded as Paul; as brave as Luther; 
as acute as Calvin; as spiritually-minded as a’ Kempis; 
as imperious as Loyola; as valiant as John Knox; 
as learned (almost) as Krasmus—he read English, Latin, 
Greek, Hebrew, French, German, Spanish and Italian 
—clearly he was no ignoramus. As James Russell Lowell 
said of Abraham Lincoln, “ he was one of Plutarch’s men” 
—one of the kind of heroes and great men old Plutarch 
loved to gossip about—and, I submit his name will remain 
a flag among men, around which men will rally and fight 
for God and Humanity “till the last syllable of recorded 
time.” Well might Lord Macauley say of him, in his 
great history of England, “John Wesley was a man, whose 
eloquence and logical acuteness might have made him emi- 
nent in literature; whose genius for government was not in- 
ferior to that of Richelieu ; and who devoted all his powers, 
in defiance of obloquy and derision to what he sincerely 
believed to be the highest good of his species.” Magnifi- 
cent tribute of one great man to another great man! So, 
another English writer said, ‘“‘John Wesley was easily the 
greatest Englishman of hisday. He was nearer the heart 
of England than Clive, or Pitt, or Johnson, or Mansfield ; 
and did more to mould and shape the minds and characters 
and consciences of Englishman, than any other man of his 
time.’ By the common consent of modern historians, he 
saved England from the horrors of a French Revolution 


I2 


on English soil, by the uplifting and spiritualizing of her 
English people, and wrote his name down in history for- 
ever, as a true servant of God and friend of mankind. 
Next, I would say, consciously or unconsciously, he 
founded a great and live church both in England and 
America, that I undertake to say has done well by 
mankind, and bids fair to live long, if not forever. I 
submit, it has done its fair share of the world’s work, 
for Christ’s sake, as Christ himself would have done it, 
if visibly present hete—to the extent of its ability. 
It has stood for freedom and against slavery—John 
Wesley himself declaring “the slave trade to be the in- 
famous sum of all human villainies,” and slavery akin 
to it. It has stood against polygamy—that other twin 
relic of barbarism. It has stood against intemperance— 
that giant evil of the Anglo Saxon race. It has stood for 
education, and covered our land all over with schools 
and seminaries, and colleges and universities. It has stood 
for woman. It has stood for the Union. And for every 
good man and good cause here for the past hundred years. 
Why a century or so ago, after the adoption of our Fed- 
eral constitution, we were the first of all the Churches (in 
the persons of Thomas Coke and Francis Asbury) to call 
upon George Washington, and congratulate him upon the 
birth of the American Republic. So, during our late great 
war for the Union, when this continent shook beneath the 
tread of armed hosts, at least a quarter of a million of our 
ministers and members rallied around the stars and stripes, 
and it was no idle compliment of Abraham Lincoln when 
he said: “The Methodist Church sends more soldiers to 
the front, more nurses to our hospitals, and more prayers to 
heaven, than any other church in the land.” So, we have 
given two great Presidents to the Republic, Ulysses S. 
Grant and William McKinley, and their names I submit, 
will go down to history an honor and a credit to the 


13 


Methodist Episcopal Church, and to the American people, 
while time lasts or history endures. 

Next, I would say, the supreme test of a man and of his 
work is what did he do and how does it /as¢? Apply this 
test to Napoleon—a great and wonderful man surely—a 
great soldier, a great statesman, and in many respects one 
of the greatest men the world ever saw. Yet in a few 
years his great empire fell utterly to pieces, and he died 
like a chained eagle on the rocky island of St. Helena. 
Apply it to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, 
and it looks to-day as if they would endure forever. Ap- 
ply this test to John Wesley and his church, and let us see 
how it works out there. In 1791, when John Wesley died, 
his followers in England numbered only about 50,000; 
but to-day his Methodist Church in all lands numbers 
Over 10,000,000 scattered around the globe, or more than 
the total population of England in his day. So, a little 
over a century ago, here in Trenton we numbered only 19 
members ; but to-day we have over 5000 members. Then 
in all New Jersey we had only about 1100 Methodists ; but 
to-day we have over 100,000, and our church and parsonage 
property is valued at the princely sum of over five millions 
of dollars. ‘Then we had only about 60,000 members in 
all America, and no churches worth mentioning—only 
“preaching houses” and “ preaching places ’—carpenter 
shops, blacksmith shops, in the open air, under some forest 
tree or the like; but to-day, North and South together 
(and we ought always to be together, one great Methodist 
Church, under one common great Methodist umbrella) 
we number over 30,000 ministers, over six million mem- 
bers, with about twice that number of adherents, and 
our church and parsonage property, if put upon the 
auction block, would sell for the imperial sum of two 
hundred millions. And we are still building churches at 
the rate of three a day, every day in the week (Sundays 


14 


included), and have just raised Twenty Millions of Dollars, 
as a Twentieth Century Thank Offering, chiefly for edu- 
cation and benevolence. And not unto us, O Lord; not 
unto us, but to thy great and excellent name alone be all the 
glory! - I give these facts and figures, not by way of vain 
boasting, but only to cite the current facts of English and 
American History. So, over yonder in England, John 
Wesley’s followers have just raised Five Millions of Dol- 
lars, as a Thank Offering also, and with part of it are going 
to erect a great Methodist Cathedral and business house in 
the heart of London, opposite the Houses of Parliament 
and Westminster Abbey, that shall stand as a monument 
to John Wesley and Wesleyan Methodism, while Old Eng- 
land stands, and that seems forever. 

A century or so ago, when Napoleon was in the plenitude 
of his power and all Europe or at least all the continent 
trembled at his nod, William Pitt was asked one day, “Have 
you no fears for England?” “No,” he answered unhesi- 
tatingly, ‘No, I have no fears for Old England. With 
God and Humanity back of her, she will stand till the 
day of Judgment!” So, I would say of the Methodist 
Episcopal Church, in spite of all croakers and grumblers, 
she is somebody and has done something in the world 
worthy of the age and land in which we live, and I have 
no fears for her future. With God and Humanity back 
of her, and Christianity and Civilization by her side, she 
will stand till the day of Judgment. And so, O church 
of the ever-living God; O Church of our fathers and 
mothers ; O Church of John Wesley and Francis Asbury; 
O Church of Matthew Simpson and Isaac W. Wiley; O 
Church of George W. Batchelder and John D. Fox: 


“‘Immovably founded in grace, 
May she stand as she ever hath stood, 
And brightly her Builder display, 
And flame with the glory of God.’’ 


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